


Finding Blake

by Vilakins



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Gauda Prime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 17:04:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11994156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vilakins/pseuds/Vilakins
Summary: More than just one night...It must have been the cold and misery of Gauda Prime that drove free trader Jenna Stannis into the arms of rebel leader Roj Blake. After all, she’d gone to GP on business and wound up basking in pleasure.Their attraction was intense, but she knew Blake's past would keep him from pledging his heart. Still, she didn’t expect to wake up one morning and find him gone without a trace.Nor could she predict that, two years later, she would be hired to protect the very man she swore never to forgive.





	Finding Blake

**Author's Note:**

> For the Unconventional Courtship challenge to adapt a real Mills & Boon plot.
> 
> This is a sequel to the shorter stories:  
> [Little Expectations](http://archiveofourown.org/works/227601)  
> [Jenna Stannis PI](http://archiveofourown.org/works/227602)

So there we were, still looking for Blake between cases in the hopes of inheriting part of a possibly still plague-ridden planet and its contents. Me and my staff of one, that is, along with his pet spaceship _Libby_. And that will of Cally's, leaving all her worldly goods, and I mean worldly, to Blake and the _Liberator_ crew provided Blake was still with us, wasn't the only reason I was after him.

I still hadn't forgiven the bastard.

* * *

It was Blake who hired me to bring in arms and other supplies to a miserable hellhole called Gauda Prime where he had set up a bounty hunter operation to collect a whole new set of criminals to attack the Federation with, even though he'd had limited success with the last lot. So far the core of the future glorious revolution was a hacker called Deva and a forger called Klyn. Not a great haul. I have to say though, he looked the part of a disreputable and bent bounty hunter.

"What the hell happened to you?" I asked. "Too many roasts, bread-and-butter puddings, and real ales?" He'd been partial to those on the old _Liberator_ , but back then he still had his rugby player physique.

He actually looked hurt. "People change, Jenna. Life hasn't been easy."

"Tell me about it. You want to know how long it took me to work my way back up to my own ship and rebuild my free-trader rep?" I was curious though. "So what happened to the eye?"

"On Jevron they were a trifle upset about what happened to their climate after Star One."

"They blamed _you_ for the Andromedans?"

"They figured out why we were there in the first place."

"So they damaged your _eye_?"

"Took it. A tooth too. A molar, back there." Blake opened his mouth wide but my mother always told me not to look bounty hunters in the gob. "Old-fashioned lot on Jevron."

"I bet they're not the only ones after you. Lucky for you, I suppose, that this lovely little paradise wasn't climate-controlled." The rain was pissing down so hard outside you could hardly see the dark, dripping trees, or the inside of Blake's office come to that. All-natural misery.

"Right." I handed over my slate to be paid. "I'll be off when the money's gone through."

"Jenna." Blake's one eye gave me a puppy-dog look that was incongruous on that unshaven, scarred face. "Stay for a while. For old time's sake."

So, what the hell, I did. We talked about our times on the Liberator, and when I stood up ready to go, he said, "Why not come out on a run with me? Camping in the woods, nothing like it."

I could just imagine the joy of rain down the back of my neck, trying to light a fire, going behind trees to… you get the idea. But it was Blake, and to be frank I'd always had a thing for him. So I went.

And that first night, in a little wooden hut with one bed and two sleeping bags zipped together, he said, "I haven't really changed, you know." His voice went all dark honey, which always got me. "There's just more of me to love." He was right. Warmed up the night a lot. To cut a long story, I stayed while he reeled a crimmo in, tested him back at base, and turned him in for his bounty, then lingered for another couple of weeks after that.

Then, one morning I woke up and he was gone. Without a trace, the utter bastard. Unless you count the note that said, "Had to go. Remember: I'm dead, you're dead, as far as anyone knows."

* * *

So yeah, I had a few choice words for Blake if I could get my hands on him.

After that I gave up free trading and set  up a planet-based private investigator business on Lindor, nothing like a change of lifestyle. Even if it came with a certain old colleague I'd come across in the course of some insurance work.

So anyway, there we were, still looking for Blake, but we were all out of leads and back groundside because a girl has to earn money, even if it's just in adultery cases, missing persons and pets, and a spot of robbery investigation and industrial espionage here and there. Pays well, and I was building a reputation, what with Vila's expertise at property entry and acquisition.

It was a slow day and I was lingering over a cooling cup of joe with my feet up on the desk and my blaster in an open drawer out of sight in case a client showed – pays to be prepared for anything– when a shadow darkened the frosted glass of my office door and knocked.

"Got a customer," said Vila, master of the annoyingly obvious.

"Back room!" I ordered; I like to keep my assets to myself. Besides, he can talk the fifth tentacle off a warg-strangler. "Come in," I called.

It was Avon.

The bastard who'd shot Blake in cold blood.

All right, it wasn't Blake, it was an Andromedan, but if it had been, he'd have shot him. Damn, I've been working with Vila too long; I'm beginning to sound like him.

I levelled my blaster under the desk. "What do you want?"

"To hire you."

"To do what?"

"Be my bodyguard."

I laughed. "You could do a lot better than me. Where's my motivation? Besides an enormous amount of money, of course?"

Avon sat down and leaned back, taking his time crossing one leg over the other. Back to the ridiculous thigh boots, I saw. "Oh, I think you'll want to. You see, I've been looking for Blake too, and I have a lead."

I narrowed my eyes so that his face turned into black-and-white stripes from the venetians in the window behind me, matching his outfit. "Riiight, so you can shoot him again?"

"You know why."

"Oh yes, the inheritance. A piece of an abandoned and probably infected planet."

"But of course." Avon looked sly and I wondered what his real reason was.

"So who wants to kill you? Just give me the short list."

"Blake, Travis, Cally…"

I sat back. "You said you killed Travis, and Vila told me Cally was dead."

"I haven't finished yet. And me."

"You want to kill you," I said flatly. "Surely you could have managed it by now. Or are those big pump-action guns you favour hard to point at yourself?"

"I'm sure you'll work it out if you try."

"Oh, I already have. Andromedans. Why haven't you turned them into piles of bubbling goo?"

"Because they seem to have worked out how to survive being shot. They fire at me then disappear, to all appearances."

"They become something else," I guessed. The mental image made me laugh. "You know, I'd like to see that. You blazing away at everything in sight in the hopes of hitting an Andromedan being a brick wall or a lamppost."

"Then you perceive part of the problem. More importantly I want you along as bodyguard so that you can find out what's going on here. Why Andromedans, and why are they impersonating those particular people?"

"Easy. They were the ones on Star One."

"Even Vila might have worked that one out," Avon said impatiently. There was an indignant "Hey!" from behind the utilities room door where Vila was lurking, ear probably glued to the keyhole. Avon bared his teeth in what might have passed as a grin in someone else. "Yes, I knew he was there. Your advertised list of services made it fairly obvious you employed him."

I sighed. "Come in here, Vila."

Vila poked his head round the door. "Do I even want to be here?"

I ignored him. After all, I'd been thinking much the same thing so I didn't have a snappy reply. I turned back to Avon. "And you think you know where Blake is? The real one?"

"No. I think the Andromedans do."

Then I'd have to find them. I had unfinished business with Blake. "How did you get here? Do you have transport?"

"Now wait a minute!" Vila looked alarmed. "If you're going to suggest what I think you are, I'm not letting Avon anywhere near _Libby_."

"We mightn't need _Libby_."

"Who's Libby?" Avon asked. "Vila's girlfriend?"

"No, she's…" Vila stopped. "Yeah, all right, she's my girlfriend."

"How did you get here," I asked Avon. "Do you have a ship?" I could see Vila waving frantically at me out of the corner of my eye, and I didn't blame him for not wanting Avon to know about his very own deep-space vehicle.

"I don't need one. They followed me here."

"How?"

"I came on a passenger ship. I assume they boarded in the guise of passengers, or possibly freight."

Great. This was going to be easy, tracking down someone who could look like anyone or anything. "How many are there?"

Avon looked briefly startled. "I have no idea. There could be as few as two or even one."

I sighed. "Fine. You've got a bodyguard. Usual hourly rates and all expenses paid."

"You don’t need me, then?" Vila said tentatively.

"Not for this case."

"Oh, good," he said with obvious relief. " _Libby_ and me are going to take a bit of a holiday. See the galaxy and all that."

Avon raised an eyebrow at me.

"Pilot friend of Vila's," I said, and Vila gave me a big grin on his (very hurried) escape out the door. And it was sort of true, like we'd thought Zen had been of the old _Liberator_. Not that we'd realised at the time that Zen and the _Liberator_ were actually one entity.

* * *

I had to say, being Avon's bodyguard had some perks as he liked to eat out in the best restaurants in the city. Not that I got to eat on the premises because I had to stand against a wall and keep an eye out for fake Blakes, Callys, and Travises, but I did demand and get a meal of my choice from the menu to reheat at home.

It was when I was accompanying Avon back to his hotel that Blake appeared out of a dark alley, complete with pump-action gun, presumably a replica of the one Vila said Avon had used on the Gauda Prime base. "Hello, Blake," I said with friendly interest, stepping quickly in front of Avon, and frankly relieved that the gun was lowered. "Does that thing actually shoot projectiles, or do you have to keep all of yourself in one piece?" It wasn't lost on me that this Blake was the one I'd last seen on GP, not the trimmer, less cynical one at Star One. "Listen, you weren't the—"

But "Blake" faded back into the alley. I leaped after him but all I could see by the street light was rubbish bins and assorted debris, any of which may have been the Andromedan. "I just want to talk," I yelled, under the assumption that whatever the thing was, it had some form of ears.

"You see my problem," Avon said.

"He didn’t exactly try to kill you!"

"No. I shoot first. You prevented that by getting in the way."

"What the hell, Avon! Did it occur to you that he might be trying to communicate?"

"They are always armed."

"But do they fire?"

"I don't give them the chance."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine. I'll walk you to the hotel. Just to be sure you're safe." Can't pretend I wasn't half hoping an alien might take a pot-shot at him. I was ready to let them.

I came right back to the alley afterwards. "If you're still here, I want to talk to you. Come on out. Or see me at my office. I'm sure you're up to finding it."

* * *

I was pleased Vila wasn't there when Cally walked in. He'd been guilt-stricken about saving some ex-Space Fleet fly-boy instead of her. "If you know anything about humans," I said, "pretending to be their dead friends is in bloody poor taste. Be someone else."

Cally flowed into Star-One-era Blake, a seriously unsettling sight. I was glad that my breakfast burrito hadn't been recent enough to threaten a reappearance. "Pick again, slime-ball."

It morphed again, this time into the redheaded hacker I'd met on the GP base. "OK, I can live with that. Though how did you meet Deva?"

"Guess."

"There were more of you on the base?"

"Guess again."

"Just the one." I narrowed my eyes. "And you were the 'Blake' Avon shot there."

'Deva' smiled. "Well done."

"So what are you trying to do? Make Avon even more unbalanced than he is?"

"I wanted him to lead me to his previous crew members. You or Vila to be exact since you just told me that Cally is dead."

"Why didn't you deal with Avon?"

"Are you joking? He _shot_ me!"

I was starting to like him. "And that was why you kept pointing guns at him?"

"Of course. It's _personal_." 'Deva' looked resentful.

"So." I swung my feet up onto my desk, a nice casual move that didn't mean I ever let go of my blaster. "You found me. What do you want?"

"It's what Blake wants. He wants you to go and get him."

Yesss! I refrained from punching the air. "And where is he?" I asked calmly.

"In prison on Porphry Major."

I should have guessed it wouldn't be easy. I'd have to get hold of Vila and _Libby_ , and one of them wouldn't be happy. "All right. But you're coming with me. Oh and by the way, can you actually shoot a gun made of, you know, _you_?"

'Deva' looked a little shame-faced. "No. I'd have to have a real one and I kept losing them."

So sue me, I had to laugh.

"Oh, and call me Jim. Blake does."        

* * *

I was right: Vila was less than impressed. "At least you didn't let Avon on board." He's very protective of _Libby_ , enormous DSV that she is.

"Oh, come on. _Libby_ can look after herself."

"Zen couldn't." Vila folded his arms and glowered, remembering that whole ship-eating cloud.

"You and I are the only ones she'll obey," I pointed out.

"And that's the way it's staying." Vila gave Jim a sidelong look. "And while he's here, he'd better not turn into you or me or anyone else."

"I promised I wouldn't," Jim said mildly. "Deva all the way to Porphry Major."

"If you think about it, Vila," I said, "it will be useful to have someone who can be anyone."

Vila brightened slightly. "Now there's an idea. And we'll need a few good ones in Sector bloody Four. Not the nicest area, well, volume to visit, what with Servalan slithering about being Sleer." The alliteration cheered him up a little.

And that, of course, was why Blake had gone there. Why else had he upped and sodded off without a word? Spoken word, anyway, (Yes, I was still pissed off.) "I wonder why Blake didn't just make her real identity public."

"Dunno. Maybe he wanted to check if it was her first."

Or probably put a stop to her personally.

"Not that Avon ever did anything about it," Vila added resentfully. "Said he wanted to hold it over her. Not that he ever did. Me, I think he was a bit soft on her."

"Soft" and "Avon" were two words I'd never imagined in the same sentence. Personally, after hearing Vila's reports on that disastrous year on _Scorpio_ , I'd put money on Avon being bugged or Tarrant being a Space Fleet plant. Given that, the fact that Servalan could have taken Avon out at any point argued for the softness being mutual. Man, I needed some brain bleach.

* * *

Long story short: I stayed on board (emergency pilot as usual) while Vila was clever at locks and Jim was various prison guards. I wasn't interested in the details, to Vila's disappointment, just that Blake was safe. And Blake needed to do some explaining. "My cabin," I said, "Now."

"So." I folded my arms and glared at him. "Why did you just leave in the middle of the night?"

"Deva unearthed data about Servalan and how she was on the track of the _Scorpio_ crew."

"And you couldn't tell me that?"

"It was safer for you not to know what I was doing."

"Partners," I said coldly. "I thought we were partners." Mind you, he'd always had that autocratic streak, making plans we'd all had to fall in with.

Blake looked all hurt, his one brown eye wide. "I had to know you were safe, even if something happened to me."

"Pull the other one. And then you promptly got arrested. Nice job there, Blake."

He looked away, embarrassed. There had to be an interesting story there.

"So what happened? If Servalan had known she had you, she'd have executed you. Probably very publicly."

"I, um, I didn't have the funds for a landing pad at the spaceport so I used an open area in the commercial district."

"They got you on a _parking violation_? "I threw my head back and roared with laughter, and somehow that broke the tension. "Seriously, Blake?"

"Illegal landing without the proper papers, actually." Blake looked slightly hopeful. "Are you still annoyed? You did come to rescue me."

"I did." I took a step closer. "Still got to clear something up, though. Jim."

"well, I couldn't pronounce his name. Jim seemed to suit him."

"Not what I was asking, and you know it."

"Ah. Well, I went back to Star One and managed to repair some of the damage, and found Jim there. He was the only survivor and by the time I left, he wanted to go with me. He likes humans and our culture. He's been very useful to me actually."

"Hmm. Vila told me what a sterling job he did being you when Avon and he turned up. Avon promptly shot him.

Blake winced.

"He said he'd set everything up."

"Ah. Yes, I can see how Avon might take that. I did set it up in case he turned up, but in the sense he took it. Nice chap, Jim, but he's still learning."

"Oh, well." I shrugged. "I suppose he made up for it by tracking me down."

Blake took a step closer to me, the last one possible without standing on my feet. I could feel his warmth. "I'll have to remember to thank him. And to properly express my gratitude to you."

I leaned back and put a hand on his chest. "Before you do, I know that Jim can be anything he wants. So what the hell was he when we were together?"

"Usually part of the furniture. Very useful in case of sudden attacks from people we brought in."

I narrowed my eyes. "He'd better not have been anything in your bedroom."

"Not once you arrived. Seriously, Jenna, do you have any idea how important you are to me?"

"You'll have to convince me."

* * *

Let's just say, he did.

After her identity suddenly appeared all over the media, "Sleer" got arrested by the President's people and executed. I have no idea what Avon thought of that, but apparently the Federation are still trying to track down her illegal fortune which mysteriously disappeared at the same time, so he's probably well consoled.

And yes, the rebellion is up and running again. They call us Blake's 17 because people get very confused about the number of people Jim is. Hey, it has a ring to it.

And it beats all those adultery cases.

**Author's Note:**

> The actual Mills & Boon summary was:
> 
>  _Hers to Protect_ by Penny Richards
> 
> More than just one night…  
> It must have been the heat and sensuality of New Orleans that drove private investigator Kate Labiche into the arms of hotshot attorney Cullen McGyver. After all, she’d gone to the Big Easy on business… and wound up basking in pleasure.  
> Their attraction was in intense, but she knew Cullen’s past would keep him from pledging his heart. Still, she didn’t expect to wake up one morning and find him gone without a trace. Not could she predict that, two years later, she would be hired to protect the very man she swore never to forgive.


End file.
